This invention relates to upholstered furniture, and in particular to an upholstered seating system capable of being quickly and easily assembled and disassembled.
Conventional upholstered seating systems such as chairs and sofas utilize a fully assembled frame having a seat, a front rail, a back, and two arms. The frame is covered by a fabric covering, and upholstery consisting of materials such as fiber and foam are attached to the fabric covering. Springs, webbing or other means of support are permanently attached below the seat to the front and back rails.
Shipping is usually expensive because conventional upholstered furniture is large, bulky and heavy. In addition, damage to any portion of the furniture requires the entire piece to be transported to a skilled person for repair. Attempts have been made to minimize these problems by constructing furniture in such a way that it can be assembled and taken apart by unskilled persons such as a customer or store owner. This type of furniture, including seating systems, is generally known in the trade as "knock-down" or KD furniture.
Prior art KD upholstered furniture has been designed to permit assembly and subsequent disassembly. This type of furniture relies upon a series of joints and fasteners which often are visible to the casual observer. These joints, which can be loose and weak, make the furniture appear inexpensive and detract from its overall strength and appearance. Most KD upholstered furniture uses exposed wood frames and exposed fasteners. It is far more difficult to build a KD chair or sofa which is completely upholstered with no exposed hardware or fasteners.
Previous efforts to design KD upholstered furniture without visible fasteners have resulted in a product which is time consuming and difficult for the unskilled customers to assemble, more expensive than comparably styled conventional upholstered furniture, requires a plurality of fasteners to maintain structural integrity, and is limited in the number of styles that can be generated from a basic design. Often bolts and other fasteners must be accessed from the bottom of the piece.
For example, the Moyer U.S. Pat. No. 5,080,438 represents an attempt to produce a knockdown upholstered piece of furniture with strong durable construction and imperceptible joints. This design would appear to require at least eight bolts or studs which must apparently be tightened from the bottom of the piece using hand tools. Consequently, the bottom of the seat platform must be left uncovered to allow access to the supporting bolts, which means that the seat platform cannot be supported by common industry techniques such as coil springs since they would inhibit access to the seat platform and the bolts.
The entire weight of the person sitting on the patented structure is supported by four bolts connecting the seat section to the arms. If the seat section is pitched towards the rear (as is done in high quality conventional permanently assembled upholstery), a high proportion of the sitter's weight is borne by the rear two seat platform bolts.
The patented design also restricts the furniture styles which can be used. Using the furniture structure disclosed by Moyer it would be difficult if not impossible to construct a high leg traditional style piece (such as a wing chair) or one having a T-shaped cushion or a recessed arm, i.e. where the arm stops prior to the front of the seat platform.
An attempt to simplify the assembly procedure is shown in the Faulkner et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,774,966. The sofa described in this patent has an assembly system employing specially designed hardware and fasteners which support the weight of persons sitting on the sofa. There are several commercial drawbacks to this design. Besides the high cost of the special guide rails required for the back assembly, the sofa is highly restricted in terms of style.
The back construction with its rectangular metal frame and attached back envelope gives the piece an unpadded back, cushioned only by the back pillow, allowing for few variations in styling. Only loose back cushions can be used with the described back frame and envelope. An attached or semi-attached back cushion can not be used with the Faulkner design. In addition, the fasteners on the rear of the back envelope can be seen.
Another drawback of the Faulkner design is that assembly must take place from the bottom of the sofa. This requires some strength and agility on the part of the assembler which might not be possible for some customers. The Faulkner patent, also, is not adaptable for high leg traditional, "T" cushion or recessed arm styles.
The Hsiung U.S. Pat. No. 4,691,965 attempts to deal with the special problems of manufacturing KD high leg traditional chairs. The patentees's solution is to use numerous bolts and fasteners requiring a relatively long time to assemble.